This is to evade the duty, the custom-house
measurement being taken only at the corners. It also enables the London
dealers to remove some two hundred oranges from every box, and still
send it into the country as full.--When one thinks what a knowing race
we came from, it is really wonderful where we Yankees picked up our
honesty.
Let us take one more glance from the window; for there is a mighty
jingling and rattling, the children are all running to see something,
and the carriage is approaching. "The carriage": it is said advisedly;
for there is but one street on the island passable to such an equipage,
and but one such equipage to enjoy its privileges,--only one, that is,
drawn by horses, and presentable in Broadway. There are three other
vehicles, each the object of envy and admiration, but each drawn by oxen
only. There is the Baroness, the only lady of title, who sports a sort
of butcher's cart, with a white top; within lies a mattress, and on the
mattress recline her ladyship and her daughter, as the cart rumbles and
stumbles over the stones;--nor they alone, for, on emerging from an
evening party, I have seen the oxen of the Baroness, unharnessed,
quietly munching their hay at the foot of the stairs, while a pair of
bare feet emerging from one end of the vehicle, and a hearty snore from
the other, showed the mattress to be found a convenience by some one
beside the nobility.
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